ISSN: 1525-898XObservations by and for the vaguely disenchanted by Kevin G. Barkes

Conceived above a saloon, delivered into this world by a masked man identified by his heavily sedated mother as Captain Video,
raised by a kindly West Virginian woman, a mild-mannered former reporter with modest delusions of grandeur and no tolerance
of idiots and the intellectually dishonest.

Every once in a while the ol' website log file jumps enormously in size. There are two reasons. Someone mentions kgb.com and links to this site from
their web page, which is good; or someone uses a graphic from this site without permission, which is bad.

I don't really mind that people take graphics from here. Hell, everything I have is stolen from somewhere else. But when I use a photo from some other site, I copy the graphic onto my server, so it's my nickel when someone downloads it.

Unfortunately, some people embed graphics on their pages with links pointing back to the original source. Which means that when you look at www.cluelessmoron.com, the graphic you're seeing is coming from my site, and I'm being charged for supplying the bandwidth to deliver the image.

By far, the biggest violators are discussion groups which permit embedded graphics into the messages. It's usually teenagers who do it. I send them an email message telling them they're welcome to copy the graphic to their own server, but they're not allowed to deeplink into my site.

In some cases, the offender isn't aware that linking to another site for a graphic is impolite at best and larceny at worst. They apologize and either copy the graphic to another server or remove the link.

Sometimes, though, I get a rude response or no response at all. That's when I take action.

What I do is simple. I substitute another graphic for the one to which they originally linked. I went to www.rotten.com, a site noted for its disgusting
photos, and purloined a couple of the milder ones.

I start with this one. I wait a day. If the link hasn't been removed, I substitute
this one.

On the third day, I start getting nasty. Most people remove the link when they're treated to
this visual delight.

So far, no one has ever made it to this one, thank goodness. I hate to think about what I'd have to dig up next.

I call my bank's automated information number daily to check on the status of my accounts. Today I discovered an authorized $99 charge by an outfit called
AS Networks LLC, a web hosting company supposedly located in Austin, Texas. Their toll free number rings into a recording of a guy who says to email tech support questions, otherwise leave a message and they'll get back to you. Yeah, right.

A quick Google indicated others have had charges from these bozos. Fortunately I contacted my bank immediately, cancelled my card and, hopefully, will be able to get my money back, especially since they'll be rather hard-pressed to produce anything remotely resembling an authorization from me.

This is the first time I've ever been nailed this way. That's one of the reasons why I am very reluctant to authorize automatic charges against any of my accounts.
How they managed to get my card number is rather troubling; undoubtedly someone's database was cracked.

In contemporary space travel films (the notable exception being Ron Howard's quasi-documentary Apollo 13), technology is taken for granted or grossly misrepresented. Shuttles leave and return to the starship Enterprise like they're crosstown buses. A pair of improbably modified space shuttles heads off to destroy a potentially earth-killing asteroid in Armageddon.. Clint Eastwood routinely pilots a heavily damaged Shuttle safely to earth in Space Cowboys, the only real challenge being the maintenance of an even grimmer than usual expression on his face.

Hollywood uses state of the art computer systems to generate the images of advanced spaceflight. Reality is a bit more primitive. At the Johnson Spaceflight Center in Houston, "outdated, unsupported computer systems operated by obsolete computer languages are performing critical flight software validation. In some cases, these systems are still loaded with punch cards." NASA scours Ebay for replacement components for some of its archaic hardware. The shuttle's onboard computer systems are small, hardened versions of IBM's 1960s-based System 360 mainframes. Their magnetic core memory wasn't replaced with semiconductor memory until 1991. The frequently-used advertising phrase "Space Shuttle technology" is technically akin to boasting something has "Eight Track Cartridge Technology".

The lost Columbia, the oldest and heaviest of the shuttles, was scheduled to retire in 2004, 23 years after its first mission. For that matter, an entirely new generation of shuttles was supposed to go into service next year, but budget cuts in the 90s forced NASA to keep the current fleet in the air. Those cuts not only curtailed development of new technology, but resulted in a relaxation of the agency's ultra-conservative safety check systems.

My point? Those under the age of 40 may have a faulty understanding of what represents the true "state of the art" in space travel. The shuttles were designed in the 70s and began flying before the introduction of the IBM personal computer. While some improvements have been made, for the most part manned spaceflight technology has not advanced in three decades. It's like that old PC in the office that management keeps around because it doesn't want to pay to upgrade the software and migrate to a contemporary system. The difference is that when that old PC finally crashes, it doesn't kill people or rain debris over thousands of square miles.

I remember growing up in the 60s, living through the exciting years leading up the landing on the moon, watching and being inspired by 2001, certain that if we could get to the moon in under a decade, we could do anything. These days, if it doesn't involve something that kills people at great distances or generates huge revenue streams, our leaders don't seem to be interested.

As Paul Valery said, "The trouble with our times is the future is not what it used to be."